Alfred Russel Wallace 



views of my new book.' I am glad to find that you agree 

 with much of what I have said in the more evolutionary 

 part of it, and that you differ only on some of my sug- 

 gested interpretations of the facts. I have always felt the 

 disadvantage I have been under — more especially during 

 the last twenty years — in having not a single good biolo- 

 gist anywhere near me, with whom I could discuss matters 

 of theory or obtain information as to matters of fact. I am 

 therefore the more pleased that you do not seem to have come 

 across any serious misstatements in the botanical portions, 

 as to which I have had to trust entirely to second-hand 

 information, often obtained through a long and varied 

 correspondence. 



As to your disagreement from me in the conclusions 

 arrived at and strenuously advocated in the latter por- 

 tions of my work, I am not surprised. I am afraid, now, 

 that I have not expressed myself sufficiently clearly as to 

 the fundamental phenomena which seem to me absolutely 

 to necessitate a guiding mind and organising power. 

 Hardly one of my critics (I think absolutely not one) has 

 noticed the distinction I have tried and intended to draw 

 between Evolution on the one hand, and the fundamental 

 powers and properties of Life — growth, assimilation, re- 

 production, heredity, etc. — on the other. In Evolution I 

 recognise the action of Katural Selection as universal and 

 capable of explaining all the facts of the continuous de- 

 velopment of species from species, " from amoeba to man." 

 But this, as Darwin, Weismann, Kerner, Lloyd-Morgan, 

 and even Huxley have seen, has nothing whatever to do 

 with the basic mysteries of life — growth, etc. etc. The 

 chemists think they have done wonders when they have 

 produced in their laboratories certain organic substances 

 — always by the use of other organic products — which life 



» " The World of Life." 

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